Category: Research

Through close technical examination and art historical analysis of two paintings, ‘Queen Eleanor and the Fair Rosamund’ (1901-02) and ‘In Memoriam’ (1890-1919), Alexandra Earl will illustrate how De Morgan’s practice was influenced by her Pre-Raphaelite contemporaries as well as driven by her artistic training and own idiosyncratic methods. New primary material, coupled with the first in-depth scientific analysis of her paintings and palette, has enabled De Morgan’s oeuvre to be better understood – thus contributing to the expanding recognition of De Morgan as an artist in her own right.

The Goodwood Collection has works by 18th century female artists including Angelica Kauffmann, Anne Damer and Katherine Read, as well as pictures by contemporary artist Holly Frean. The evening is an opportunity to hear about these women, plus see some of their works. A highlight includes Angelica Kauffmann’s portrait of Mary, Duchess of Richmond, which is not usually on public display.

In more straightforward cases of known attribution and singular styles, AI can sort images efficiently. But can it interpret art? The answer is a fairly straightforward “no.” AI lacks human researchers’ ability to engage in primary study of techniques, and the capacity to contextualize an artwork within history. Quite simply: AI cannot reason why artworks look the way they do. Her thesis that AI is not suited for a humanistic pursuit of art history comes through strongly, but it could have been supplemented by further information in the form of more case studies.

Artists are makers of things. Yet it is a measure of the disembodied manner in which we generally think about artists that we rarely consider the everyday items they own. This innovative book looks at objects that once belonged to artists, revealing not only the fabric of the eighteenth-century art world in France but also unfamiliar—and sometimes unexpected—insights into the individuals who populated it, including Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun.

From the curious to the mundane, from the useful to the symbolic, these items have one thing in common: they have all been eclipsed from historical view. Some of the objects still exist, like Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s color box and Jacques-Louis David’s table. Others survive only in paintings, such as Jean-Siméon Chardin’s cistern in his Copper Drinking Fountain, or in documents, like François Lemoyne’s sword, the instrument of his suicide. Several were literally lost, including pastelist Jean-Baptiste Perronneau’s pencil case. In this fascinating book, the authors engage with fundamental historical debates about production, consumption, and sociability through the lens of material goods owned by artists. 

Painting and Sculpture of Europe seeks a 2024-27 Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Foundation Fellow to assist with researching the collection of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings for an online collection catalogue. This three-year fellowship builds upon Painting and Sculpture of Europe’s record of in-depth digital collection publications, such as Gauguin: Paintings, Sculptures, and Graphic Works at the Art Institute of Chicago (2016) and Monet: Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago (2014), thereby augmenting the museum’s impressive roster of digital catalogues and ensuring worldwide access to new research. Although several paintings from this group were part of the museum’s founding purchase in 1890, the 17th-century Dutch and Flemish collection has never been extensively studied, and technical and stylistic research will generate new discoveries about these foundational works. The artists identified for this project include Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Steen, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, and David Teniers the Younger, among others.

“Paris is the centre of the cult,” wrote Robert Hichens in Felix, his 1902 novel on the rising number of morphine addictions in Europe. In Paris, artists depicted the morphine addict numerous times, yet they disregarded the reality of France’s addiction problem: male medical professionals made up the highest proportion of people who used morphine habitually. In oil paintings, caricatures, and lithographs, artists such as Pablo Picasso, Eugène Grasset, and Théophile Steinlen almost always depicted the morphine addict as a deviant female figure.

Artists sensationalized addiction to elicit shock and stand out in the crowded Parisian art market. Their artworks show influences from contemporary medical texts on addiction and artistic depictions of sex workers, lesbians, and other women deemed socially deviant. These images proliferated in French society, creating false narratives about who was or could become addicted to drugs and setting a precedent for the visualization of drug addiction. Hannah Halliwell links the feminization of addiction to broader anxieties in late nineteenth-century France - the defeat by Prussia in 1871, concerns about social decadence, a declining population, and a rising feminist movement.

Papers are invited that investigate, but are not limited to, any of the following prompts:

• The value (and limitations) of painted sources for historians of dress including portraits, genre scenes, illuminated manuscripts, frescoes and miniatures
• The reality (or otherwise) of clothing portrayed in paintings through comparison with extant garments, documentary sources etc
• The practices of dressing up (e.g. fancy dress, professional robes) or dressing down (e.g. déshabillé) for portraits
• The symbolism of dress in paintings
• The role of clothing in interpretations of meaning or narrative
• Individual artists and their different approaches to depicting dress
• Artists’ involvement in decisions about what sitters should wear for portraits
• Artists’ personal attitudes to fashion and the selection of clothing worn in self-portraits
• Techniques used by artists to represent textiles and three-dimensional garments in paint
• The draped figure in painting – depictions of the clothed and unclothed body
• The role of the specialist drapery painter in artists’ studios
• Overlapping spheres of production in the raw materials for paintings and textiles e.g. pigments and dyes, linen canvas, animal hair
• Paintings as fashion illustration, and their role in the fashion design process
• Textile designs inspired by paintings
• Painters who were also fashion/textile designers
• Museum practices of exhibiting paintings alongside items of dress
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This companion examines the global Renaissance through object-based case studies of artistic production from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe in the early modern period.

The international group of contributors take an art historical approach characterized by close analysis of form and meaning as well as function, and a focus on questions of crosscultural dialogue and adaptation. Seeking to de-emphasize the traditional focus on Europe, this book is a critical guide to the literature and the state of the field. Chapters outline new questions and agendas while pushing beyond familiar material. Main themes include workshops, the migrations of artists, objects, technologies, diplomatic gifts, imperial ideologies, ethnicity and indigeneity, sacred spaces and image cults, as well as engaging with the open questions of "the Renaissance" and "the global."

Essential Duties

Organizing and managing the academic programs (conferences and lectures) sponsored by the Research Division each year, in conjunction with the Director

Fostering the visibility of the Fellowship Program through outreach to academic institutions and attendance at regional, national, and international conferences; identifying, creating, and publicizing opportunities for Fellows to present their scholarship in diverse public settings and formats

Working with the Fellows in consultation with Library, Art, and Botanical Curatorial staff to develop content across multiple platforms for The Huntington

Working with Huntington colleagues to develop special programs (workshops, symposia, summer institutes, etc.)

Liaising with the Education,  Communications, and Digital Divisions to connect the scholarly work that Fellows do in our collections to a broad audience of educators, students, members, and the local community.

Other duties as may apply.

The Night Watch, one of the most famous masterpieces by Rembrandt, is the subject of a large research and conservation project. For the conservation treatment, it is of great importance to understand its current condition. Correlated nano-tomography using x-ray fluorescence and ptychography revealed a—so far unknown—lead-containing “layer”, which likely acts as a protective impregnation layer applied on the canvas before the quartz-clay ground was applied. This layer might explain the presence of lead soap protrusions in areas where no other lead components are present. In addition to the three-dimensional elemental mapping, ptychography visualizes and quantifies components not detectable by hard x-ray fluorescence such as the organic fraction and quartz. The first-time use of this combination of synchrotron-based techniques on a historic paint micro-sample shows it to be an important tool to better interpret the results of noninvasive imaging techniques operating on the macroscale.

The present first part of the RKD Study Frans Hals and his workshop comprises three monographic chapters on the life, work and reception of Frans Hals. The author devotes particular attention to his theory on Hals’s workshop practice and the collaboration with other artists. Thanks to new insights gained by technical research, as well as new possibilities for comparing and analyzing works of art in minute detail – using high-resolution digital photographs – Claus Grimm now distinguishes which paintings, or which parts of them, were executed by Hals himself and which were done by studio assistants. A large number of details is reproduced in the publication, providing insight into the arguments for accepting or rejecting specific attributions.

While Frans Hals’s The Laughing Cavalier is on loan to the National Gallery, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester takes up his esteemed position in the Great Gallery. Like Hals's ‘cavalier’, Dudley is shown wearing rich clothing appropriate to a member of society's elite. Known today mainly as Queen Elizabeth I's favourite, Dudley was a complex figure. Learn what the painting tells us about its famous sitter and hear how art historians investigate surviving Elizabethan paintings today.

We are looking to attract a scholar whose work centres on visual, theoretical and aesthetic questions as well as recent and contemporary art practices. We are particularly interested in scholars who engage in critical debates around racism and racialisation; migration and diaspora; cross-cultural and cross-regional interactions; and/or ecologies and environmental politics. However, we encourage applications from all candidates interested in innovative conceptual approaches, who are able to connect their areas of expertise to larger intellectual and methodological frameworks.